Philharmonic
Orchestra of
Indianapolis

Jackson was the Artistic Director and Conductor of the Philharmonic Orchestra of Indianapolis from 1993 to 2010. After he retired as conductor he played in the orchestra's cello section for two seasons and continued as a part of the annual gospel concert leadership team. Jackson expanded the Phil as a superior place for volunteer musicians to play in a full symphonic orchestra. Before coming to the orchestra, Jackson enjoyed a twenty-year career as a professor at Butler University. During his tenure he established the Greater Indianapolis Youth Symphony. He was also founding conductor and music director of the Indiana Opera Theatre, the precursor of the present Indianapolis Opera Company, and was the Music Director of the Indianapolis Ballet Company. He had previously been the Music Director to the Springfield Symphony in Springfield, Ohio, where among many other achievements he founded The Springfield Summer Arts Festival, to this day the longest-running summer arts festival in the Midwest. Prior to coming to the Midwest, he was the founding cellist of the distinguished Lasalle String Quartet, and taught and conducted at the Yale University Summer School of Music in Norfolk, Connecticut. For several summers in the decade of the nineteen-fifties, he was Music Director for the Turneau Opera Players in Woodstock, New York, where many famous singers got their start. Jackson was also a great lover of jazz and worked closely with the bassist Charles Mingus. A five-year veteran of the Navy during World War II, and a recipient of the Bronze Star for his distinguished service as a Japanese Interpreter, he was a graduate of Yale University and the Juilliard School. His principal teachers were Ivan Galamian and Jean Morel.